Miss America delivers message

No beauty seen in teen drinking

Jennifer Berry tells of death of friend back in Oklahoma

The first time Jennifer Berry attended a funeral, it was for a 16-year-old friend who had died in an accident involving alcohol.

Berry was 15 then, but the death made a huge impact on the Tulsa, Okla., native. So much so that Berry — better known as Miss America 2006 — is spending her yearlong reign raising public awareness about the dangers of underage drinking.

“It is not a rite of passage, it is a dead-end road,” Berry told an audience at “Drunk and Drunker,” a community forum Tuesday night at Maple Woods Community College.

The program was sponsored by the Northland Coalition, Tri-County Mental Health Services and the Interagency Coordinating Committee for the Prevention of Underage Drinking.

Talking about the dangers of drinking and driving was a cause for Berry, now 22, long before she became Miss America. Over the past five years, she spoke to students and DUI offenders, lobbied the Oklahoma Legislature to raise the penalties for selling liquor to minors and even helped her local sheriff’s office bust clerks who give beer to people younger than 21.

At Tuesday’s program, a panel of experts urged mothers and fathers to talk with their children about the danger of underage drinking — not once, but repeatedly. They also warned parents about the legal penalties for serving alcohol to teens at house parties.

Spring is a crucial time of year for education and awareness, the experts said. As proms and graduations roll around, the risk increases for drunken driving crashes involving young people.

One of the speakers was Karen Wynn, a MADD volunteer who speaks at local schools about how drunken driving affected her family. Wynn’s 19-year-old daughter, Nicole, died in a 1995 crash at North Oak Trafficway and 55th Street. Nicole hadn’t been drinking, but she got into a car with someone who had.

“She was the only one in the car who wasn’t drunk,” Wynn said. Her daughter was the only one who perished.

There are many statistics that show how much damage underage drinking can do, Wynn said, but telling her story helps reach students in a way that numbers can’t.

“I think it makes more of an impact when there’s a face to go with it,” she said.

By JAMES HART

The Kansas City Star

Source: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/14209973.htm

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